In 1968, Capital International published indexes covering the global stock market for non-U.S. markets. In 1986, Morgan Stanley licensed the rights to the indexes from Capital International and branded the indexes as the Morgan Stanley Capital International indexes. By the 1980s, the MSCI indexes were the primary benchmark indexes outside of the US before being joined by FTSE, Citibank, and Standard & Poor's. After Dow Jones started float weighting its index funds, MSCI followed. In 2004, MSCI acquired Barra, Inc., to form MSCI Barra. In mid-2007, parent company Morgan Stanley decided to divest from, and perhaps spin off, MSCI. This was followed by an initial public offering of a minority of stock in November 2007. The divestment was completed in 2009. The company is headquartered in New York City. Some companies in MSCI's peer group includes Glass Lewis, Factset, Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, and Standard & Poor's.
The MSCI global equity indexes have been calculated since 1969 and include MSCI World and MSCI EAFE. Initially, the company used eight factors in developing its indexes: momentum, volatility, value, size, growth, size nonlinearity, liquidity, and financial leverage. In 2018 MSCI announced it would begin including mainland Chinese "A" shares in its Emerging Markets Index. Initially the domestic Chinese companies received a 5% weighting in the index even though the stated methodology called for a 40% weighting. While MSCI is the last major index provider to include the companies, the decision has proved controversial due to the fact that many Chinese listed companies refuse to permit the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to inspect their financial records, thereby sparking criticism and questions from Senator Marco Rubio and others. In February 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported the decision was the result of pressure from the Chinese government. In March 2019, CNBC reported that MSCI would quadruple the weightings of mainland Chinese shares in its global benchmarks. In April 2020, it was reported that Donald Trump was considering an executive action to prohibit the Thrift Savings Plan from transferring $50 billion to mirror the MSCI All Country World Index fund.
